Bill Clinton: This Generation Can Change the World

The 2014 Clinton Global Initiative University featured President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State (and Senator) Hillary Clinton, as well as their daughter Chelsea talking about how technology is being used by this generation of young people to make a huge difference in the world.

According to the Associated Press, the former president spoke at the conference for the organization bearing his name at Arizona State University this weekend. He highlighted the fact that there are more than a million non-governmental organizations in the United States that are doing work to make the world a better place, “and more than half of those have been created in the last 18 years,” he said.

“These people are making a difference, far more than any previous generation, and on every continent, and on every income level, in ways that no one had imagined before,” he said. “That’s the great gift that technology has given us.”

Clinton also talked about politics, of course, telling young people that they should get involved and not stay on the sidelines. With an almost-certain 2016 presidential bid in the offing by Hillary Clinton, his words were parsed carefully.

“Changing the world is a group enterprise,” the former president said. “There’s no place for any of us in the peanut gallery. We have to be on the field and playing.”

He also noted that this is a very divisive political atmosphere right now, making it very difficult for compromise and bipartisanship to have a chance to get anything accomplished.

“Dave Camp, the Republican chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, has just proposed a very interesting set of tax reforms — and, boy, did he get killed by his own crowd,” Clinton said.

Clinton was referring to a proposal by the Michigan Representative that called for eliminating several popular tax breaks, as well as taxing Wall Street banks and wealthy families. His proposal was intended to make it easier to offer a lower overall tax rate for Americans in general. His proposal did not go over well with his own party.

Clinton’s efforts with the Clinton Global Initiative and the University in particular have occupied a lot of his time since leaving office.

Meanwhile, one question on everyone’s mind at CGIU was about whether or not Hillary herself would run.